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Editorial

Senate should fight blight

Bill would speed sale of properties that harm neighborhoods

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Monday April 7, 2014 6:32 PM

The Ohio Senate has before it a measure that could breathe new life into blighted “zombie
properties,” by making it easier for interested parties to buy and improve them.

In the limited time left for legislative action this year, senators should make House Bill 223,
passed unanimously by the House on Wednesday, a priority.

Republican Sens. Jim Hughes of Columbus and Kevin Bacon of Minerva Park and Democratic Sen.
Charleta B. Tavares of Columbus should take the lead, because the bill especially would benefit
Franklin County, along with Cuyahoga and Lucas counties, where the need to clean up blighted
properties is greatest.

The bill would create a five-year pilot project in those counties, allowing long-vacant
properties to be auctioned at sheriff’s sales without an appraisal and, consequently, with no
requirement that the sale price be at least two-thirds of an appraised value.

Appraisals and minimum bids traditionally have been required as a way to ensure that properties
go only to people who are serious about making something of them. But hard experience since the
Great Recession has shown that some properties, typically the most-distressed, find no takers at
sheriff’s sales.

Allowing them to sell for whatever the market will bear should finally allow some to move.

Columbus City Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr., who suggested the bill to Franklin County
lawmakers, well knows the challenges of cleaning up neighborhood blight from his days as Franklin
County’s first environmental court judge.

Testifying before the House, he called the idea of abandoning appraisals and minimum bids “
radical.”

“It quite frankly frightened some people when they first heard about it,” he said. “But where we
have these blighted neighborhoods and nothing is moving, we need to do something different.”

The bill includes some guardrails, suggested by Pfeiffer, to prevent abuse of the program: Only
properties that meet the Ohio Revised Code’s current definition of “blighted” could be included,
and bidders would have to be pre-qualified by the appropriate city in order to participate. Winning
bidders would receive properties free of all unpaid taxes and liens, but would be obligated to
remediate the blight within 12 months or face action from the city.

The recession greatly increased the number of “zombie properties” that failed to find buyers at
sheriff’s sale — in Franklin County in 2008, there were 162; in 2012, there were 515.

Neighborhoods struggling to become better places to live are overwhelmed by the plague of
abandoned, derelict houses attracting crime and filth. House Bill 223 offers hope that the tide can
be turned.

It also offers some help beyond the three counties in the pilot program, by creating a faster
track within Ohio’s lengthy judicial process for foreclosing on vacant properties. Recommendations
for it and the pilot program came from a report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Lengthy due process before foreclosing on someone’s home is appropriate, but, as the Fed report
pointed out, for properties whose owners have abandoned them, the extra steps and waiting periods
benefit no one and allow blight to fester.

House Bill 223 is a chance for Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to join in something that
could benefit virtually every Ohio community. It deserves swift passage.